The front says "HP Apollo" with a 715t/33 sticker stuck under it. The rear says 425t and there is a Domain/OS keyboard port. (Amusingly, it has a Sun Microsystems asset tag.)

I crack it open by taking off the front panel and sliding off the top. Drumroll please.

The Domain/OS keyboard port is ... not connected to anything. Indeed as labeled, it's (mostly) a 715 internally with a PA-7100LC CPU. However, it has a 425t-type video board in a DIO-II slot (it is an A2089-66530 card with BNC RGB and audio, and my HP 98782A hernia monitor I use with my 9000/350 does NOT like the frequencies), the 425t front-lights and the 425t panel buttons.

HP makes reference to the 715t/33 in one of their technical docs but overall this thing seems to be an odd duck. The HP Museum doesn't seem to mention it.

Anyone know much about these? I assume it was an HP aftermarket upgrade, or did they actually sell these directly?

This is one of the two in-chassis upgrades available from HP. You could get a 425e upgraded into a 705 (or 710?), and a 425t upgraded into a 715. While the 425e upgrade made sense as it has exactly the same chassis as the 705/710, and the motherboards share the same form factor and external connector placement, model t upgrades are a bit more "rock'n'roll".

The video board is probably an SGC board, not a DIO one, as there has never been (to the best of my knowledge) any kind of DIO-II support in PA-RISC machines and HP-UX, while the 4xx systems had an SGC option (the motherboard has both a DIO-II and an SGC connector, but the chassis only support one slot, so you had to decide at order time, depending upon your frame buffer option). You can check that easily by looking for a set of DIO select code DIP switches on the board.

I would not be surprised if the HP-IB option (if your 425t had it) also ends up with a dangling connector.

On the other hand, the audio chip of the 715 is probably missing, or with no external connectors.

Could you take some pictures of this machine? I'd love to see what it looks like internally.

ClassicHasClass wrote:However, you appear to be correct about the video board. There's a small DIP switch block on it but it doesn't look like a DIO select code block.

This is definitely an SGC board - DIO-II boards also have two connectors on the edge, one large and one much smaller. This seems to be the regular CRX board found on SGC 425 and 720/730, with the 735/755 audio board (which was also SGC) squeezed onto it.

Also, the ISA slot seems to be functional, as the associated circuitry on the motherboard is still present.

While intended to be used with the Apollo Token-Ring board only, there might be some support for other ISA boards under HP/UX. You might want to see what drivers sam will let you choose...

EDIT: CRX, not VRX.

Last edited by miod on Wed Apr 12, 2017 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ClassicHasClass wrote:I'm trying to get more info on the card. HP barely mentions it in their part lists, and no one else seems to know much about it. miod, how did you know it was a VRX?

I didn't know and I made a typo; I meant CRX.

I initially thought the video part of that board would be a packed version of the A1659, hence CRX. But checking your pic against an A1659 shows this is wrong. The CRX has four 1820-8311 chips and its ROM is 1818-5107. The grayscale GRX (A1924) is similar, but ROM is 1818-5120.

Your board has ROM 1818-5347, which implies it is more recent. Also, its vram chip look like those found on EISA-form SGC video boards found on... true 715 systems. So it could be an Artist rather than a CRX.

Also, while discussing board layout, the audio part of your board is almost identical to the A2288 (audio + optional fddi on 735/755), with a set of six orange IC being put in a slightly different grid. The 1821-0050 chip is also part of the audio half; all the other 1821 chips are for video.